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Why we have meta: Timmy, Johnny, Spike, and how the perk rework changed the game

prion11
prion11 Member Posts: 361
edited September 2022 in General Discussions

In the mid 2000s, a magic the gathering player developed an ingenious test for explaining meta, and the types of players that play a competitive game. This test can be applied to DBD and I think it can explain some of the effects of the recent perk rework, further putting things in perspective. I'll explain the test below:


TIMMY

Timmy is defined by the fact that he is playing FOR FUN. He may be less experienced, but he enjoys the game and wants to play in a way that he enjoys. Winning and losing matters less to him. A veteran player would look at Timmy's builds and say "why would he do that? he must be new." But really, it's because Timmy uses perks that give him that "fun" value. Timmy runs devour hope on most of his killers, even if they don't use a lot of basic attacks because the most fun thing is to get 5 stacks and win. Timmy wants to maximize the most fun interactions in the game. On his survivor builds, he is using stuff like breakout, power struggle, flip flop, or any means necessary. He is often a social gamer and wants to above all, have fun with his friends on survivor.


JOHNNY

Johnny doesn't just want to win, he needs to win in style. Johnny doesn't think a win counts if it uses meta perks. Johnny is why meme add ons exist. He's running no blink nurse with superior anatomy and bamboozle. Speed limiter billy, and doing the "afk killer" challenge. Johnny lives to get his insane, weird build complimented after he wins handily with it. A survivor johnny is running red herring + blast mine, 4 totem eating perks, the chest plunderer build, wiretap/repressed alliance, or 3 exhaustion perks and vigil to confuse the killer. Johnny has tried to leave the trial while holding pinhead's box multiple times. Johnny says "lmao guys watch me win with no perks"


SPIKE

Spike plays to WIN. Winning and improving are the only points of the game for Spike. He has seen every otz video and subscribes to people that play his main at a high level. Spike plays meta and only meta, there's not much else to it. Currently, Spike is running lethal pursuer on almost all of his killers, and then 3 regression perks or maybe no way out. Survivor spike has probably had the same build since DBD released, but he swapped DS for OTR when the perk rework happened. Survivor spike only cares about escaping. He will hide in a locker if the 2nd to last survivor is on hook. If he escaped without ever even needing to use dead hard, or go for a save, he wouldn't care because his mmr went up.


What changed with the perk rework in these archetypes?

  1. Timmy has more fun things to do
  2. Johnny got some new silly perk combos for both survivor and killer
  3. Most importantly, the variance of perks that Spike uses has increased. Pre perk rework, Spike used only 7 perks, dead hard, unbreakable, borrowed time, decisive strike, iron will, windows, and circle of healing.

Post perk rework, from what I can tell, this has changed (from my looking at high level survivor builds in my games, and content creators games) This is because in SWF, the relative strength of more than 10-15 meta perks means that it pays for a SWF to spread out their strengths perk wise. An optimized SWF post perk rework has 2 or 3 people that specialize, like one guy with 2 healing perks, one sabo guy, and a gen rush guy.

Spike now employs some combo of:

Dead hard, lithe, sprint burst, unbreakable, deliverance, off the record, prove thyself, hyperfocus, windows, stakeout, reassurance, overcome, lucky break, circle of healing, we're gonna live forever, we'll make it, no one left behind, and a few others.

Killer spike has also changed, but not as much. He still employs mostly slowdown, but those slowdown perks have changed, at least. More needs to be changed for killer spike to show some variety in his build.

Post edited by prion11 on

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